The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [51]
“Doctor?”
“Have you made a copy of this diagram?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Keep it, in the unlikely event that we should need to refer to it again.” The Doctor picked up an eraser.
“What are you saying, Dr. Kreizler?” Marcus asked.
“I am saying, Marcus,” he answered, starting to wipe away what he’d written with energetic strokes, “that it is all—so—much—poppycock!”
When the Doctor stepped back from the board again, only two sets of words remained: AN ABDUCTION toward the top of the board and THE WOMAN ON THE TRAIN: GOVERNESS OR NURSE at the bottom. “Remove all the improbable details contained in the circle, and we are left with a far more useful geometric configuration.” He proceeded to slowly and deliberately drag the chalk from the words at the top of the board to those at the bottom; “A straight line.”
We all looked at the thing for a few seconds: it seemed like there was an awful lot of empty space on that board, all of a sudden.
Mr. Moore sighed, putting his feet up. “Meaning exactly what, Kreizler?”
The Doctor turned, his face darkened by genuine apprehension. “It’s understandable that you seek to impose a political explanation on this crime, John, because the alternative is, in fact, far more disturbing and volatile. Yet it is also far more likely.” He pulled out his cigarette case and offered its contents to Miss Howard, Marcus, and Mr. Moore in turn. I was dying for a smoke myself, but it’d have to wait. After they’d all lit their sticks, the Doctor took to pacing in his usual way, and he was still going when he announced, “I believe that the detective sergeants’ analysis of the physical evidence is, as always, flawless. Señora Linares was in all probability attacked by another woman, whose use of a piece of pipe she found on the scene, as well as her willingness to strike in a public place in broad daylight, indicates spontaneity. That she did not injure the señora more seriously is a testament to blind luck and the limits of her own strength, I suspect, and not to any professional skill.”
“All right,” Mr. Moore answered, though he was clearly unconvinced. “In that case, Kreizler, I’ve got only one question, though it’s a big one: why?”
“Indeed.” The Doctor walked over and wrote WHY? in large letters on the left-hand side of the board. “A woman takes a child. She demands no ransom. And several days later she is observed in public, apparently caring for the girl as if—as if—” The Doctor seemed to be searching for the right words.
It was Miss Howard that gave them to him: “As if she were her own.”
The Doctor turned his gleaming black eyes on Miss Howard for a moment. “As always, gentlemen,” he said, “Sara’s unique perspective cuts to the heart of the matter. As if the child were her own. Think of it: whoever this woman is, she has managed to abduct, out of all the children in New York, one whose disappearance could cause an international crisis. Bend your mind to it, for a moment, Moore—if there is no political dimension to the abduction, what does that tell us?”
Mr. Moore scoffed. “That she didn’t do her damned homework, that’s what it tells us.”
“Meaning?”
It was Cyrus’s turn to step in: “Meaning, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Moore, that, faced with the situation she was in, she couldn’t do anything but obey the impulse of the moment.” He glanced around at the others, then smiled a bit and looked to the floor. “Something I know a little about…”
“Precisely, Cyrus,” the Doctor said, starting to note things under the WHY? heading. “Thank you. It means that she was in the grip of an urge, a spontaneous urge that destroyed any possibility not only of self-control but of premeditation, of researching her victim. Of, as Moore rather caustically puts it, doing her homework. What could possibly cause such recklessness?”
“Well, I hate to state the obvious,” Marcus said, “but—she apparently